Front Burner - How Canada helped save the White Helmets

Episode Date: October 29, 2018

After a harrowing escape, more than a hundred Syrian war zone first responders and their families are being resettled in Canada, as refugees. Hear the CBC's Murray Brewster describe their journey and why they could still be in danger.

Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Today I want to tell you about a group of people who put themselves in incredible danger and the quiet Canadian effort to bring them here, to safety.

I'm talking about the White Helmets. You may have heard of them, a documentary about them won an Oscar. We have a very short statement from them that we'd like to share with you. To save one life is to save all of humanity. The White Helmets are a group of Syrian first responders who operate mostly in rebel-held areas of the country. When a bomb explodes, they run towards it to try to rescue the wounded.

This summer, we learned that Canada was planning to bring some of them here to resettle them as refugees. And now, after an extraordinary rescue in July, the first of 117 White Helmets and their families have arrived. The CVC's Murray Brewster, he was there. Ordinary people who have seen the absolute worst of humanity and chosen to not let their fellow citizens down. So how did they escape?

And could they still be in danger? That's today on FrontBurner. Hi, I'm Murray Brewster, and I am CBC's parliamentary defense and foreign policy reporter. Murray, who is Maysoon al-Masri? She is a former journalist. She worked for the Syrian news agency Sana, and she was there for several years until about 2013, 2014. She lost a brother. He was shot by one of the missiles sent by Assad, and she said that they weren't able to give him any of the rights that are given to someone who passes away, and it was very difficult.

So she decided that she wanted to get involved and help people out. She lived in southern Syria in a place called Dara, and she was the correspondent in Dara for the news agency SANA. She lost her brother, and that sort of crossed the line for her in terms of the war becoming very personal. And when you cover a war, you're an observer. She crossed the line from being an observer to being a participant in the sense that she was there to help and she wanted to help people. participant in the sense that she was there to help and she wanted to help people. And she has also, for the White Helmets, become a spokeswoman, someone who is able to speak to journalists and be able to have conversations with them and be able to tell their story.

So I want to come back to Maysoon and her story in a moment. But first, can we talk about the organization that she's part of, the White Helmets? Well, they are first responders. They are paramedics, they are doctors, they're ordinary citizens who have taken up a cause to be able to respond to bombings and attacks, including chemical weapons attacks. And to pull civilians out of the rubble and to get them to treatment. Because, as you can imagine, as the Syrian civil war has dragged on and that country's agony has been just extended beyond all belief. There have been a breakdown of what we would consider to be in our country, the normal background of, you know, first responders and people. That infrastructure is no longer there. Yeah, that infrastructure is just no longer there. And ordinary people had to step in. Marie, do you know any more details about what Massoun may have experienced while working as a white helmet?

One of the things that she talked about was her role was to go to places where men couldn't. And that was dealing with women and children in particular, the most vulnerable victims of the war in Syria. And she has many stories about the people whom she helps. But there is one that really sticks with her, and that is a woman whose house was bombed and suffered second-degree burns. And she was tending to her at the same time as medics were also tending to her and trying to dress her wounds. And they had no painkillers. They had no medication.

As they were trying to dress her wounds, Massoon said the only thing that she could do was hold the woman's hand. And every time they touched her, squeeze her hand just to distract her. She says that is something that's going to stay with her forever. The White Helmets have also been responsible through social media for documenting attacks on civilians. And this is where they have become quite politicized and quite controversial. We witness all the crimes of the regime.

We witness the regime use of chemical weapons. Our report crimes against humanity. The Syrian government will have attacked a target and they will say they were bombing a rebel position and the White Helmets would say, no, you hit a hospital or you hit a school or you hit a residential neighborhood. And they would automatically put this up online, which has become an embarrassment

for the Assad governments. Right, they're essentially exposing them. Well, they're exposing them, but it went to a whole new level when Russia became involved in the conflict and began bombing targets and began trying to help prop up the Assad regime. They have used not only their military, but they have used many arms of the state craft,

including disinformation campaigns against the White Helmets. Terrorists or humanitarian volunteers? Real video or fake propaganda? They will take grains of truth and they will twist them. And this is where the controversy with the white helmets comes in, in the sense that they work primarily in rebel-held areas, which there were many different Islamist groups that they had to negotiate with to get access because these groups would have checkpoints through different areas.

But it has been well documented in the international media that some former Islamist fighters joined the White Helmets. And I don't know if they necessarily renounced their allegiance, but they were no longer fighters. They became first responders. And that information has been taken and twisted and used to discredit the White Helmets. And that disinformation campaign continues even until today. And so certainly it was a propaganda organization too, along with possibly doing some real good relief work.

But too many times we've seen the same child in photographs, you know, year after year. The White Helmets have quite an extensive archive of the different atrocities that have taken place. And that archive is located in Turkey. And that's there for the international community should there be war crimes prosecutions. War crimes prosecutions that could potentially implicate not only the Syrian regime, but also Russia. So the regime of Bashar al-Assad and the Russian government as well have a vested interest in discrediting the White Helmets. They have vested interest in discrediting the White Helmets. They have vested interest in discrediting the White Helmets. They also have vested interest in eliminating them.

And that's where last summer's evacuation plays into the narrative. Okay, so let's return to Maysoon. What do we know about how she got herself out of Syria? Well, there was in the late spring and early summer of this year, a sense that Assad was going to win the war and that the area where she had lived most of her life was going to be overrun and brought back under government control. And there were threats constantly being issued against White Helmet volunteers. was that everything changed when Russia brokered its ceasefire with the rebels in the area that would allow the Syrian forces to roll through right to the border of Israel in the Golan Heights. And what changed was essentially the Russians said to the rebels, OK, hand over your weapons, get on buses and get out of here.

White helmets, you're not going anywhere and we'll deal with you. They were a clear target. They were clear targets and it was made very clear that they were going to be arrested. And in the interview that we did with Massoon, she said she wasn't afraid of dying. What she was more afraid of was being arrested and tortured because she had seen photographs of what happened in Syrian prisons. And she said it was imminent. She knew it was coming because the forces, Assad forces,

were tightening in on her area and her hometown. So it was just a matter of time where they would all wind up arrested and in jail and tortured. She was not only afraid for herself, she was afraid for her husband, and she was afraid for her extended family. That is one of the things. It's a very small story, it's her personal story, but in a much larger sense, it galvanized the white helmet movement. And also, when word of this began to filter through the diplomatic community, the international community, particularly

among Canadians, it was raised by a Canadian diplomat. And it was around the time of the NATO summit. Right. And I know Canada played a role in helping to evacuate these White Helmets. Canada spearheaded the role. And a lot of it happened at the beginning behind the scenes with Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland essentially, and not literally, but essentially banging the table at a dinner at the NATO summit saying, we have to help these people. And that moment was very important because you had the foreign ministers of Germany, you had the foreign ministers, the foreign minister of Britain and other NATO allies around the table. And she was very convincing. I don't want to give false hope to anyone,

but I do want to assure people that we continue to feel a very strong moral responsibility to the White Helmets who are still in Syria. How did the White Helmets get out? How did Maysoon get out? It was a very complex international operation because essentially as the Syrian forces were getting closer to the border, the escape routes were getting much smaller. And Massoun had to slip away from her home in the middle of the night. And they had to make their way on foot to the border where there were buses waiting for them that were being driven by the Israeli military. And the Israeli military provided them safe passage through the Golan Heights, through Israel, and into Jordan. Interestingly, how everyone was notified about the evacuation and when to assemble and the times,

it was through WhatsApp. They were doing it all through texting. And it was very precarious because the Internet was up and down. And there were initially the thought was there were going to be up to 700 white helmets. And if you include families like 12 to 1500 people coming, they only got 400. Why only 400? Partly because of the fact that the internet was up and down. Partly because of the fact there were government checkpoints where people were stopped and they were turned back or they were unable to get to the assembly points on time. Also too, and this is what we learned in the interview, the word was out among different people and neighbors in Dara

and there were essentially government forces looking for them. She was telling stories about how White Helmets, who were unable to get out, tried to get on buses going north to get into areas that were still rebel controlled. And they were being spotted by government agents and hauled off the buses and they've disappeared. And we don't know what's happened to them. And we don't know what's happened to them, no. What about the ones that were left behind? Is it fair to say that they're still in grave danger?

Yes. And some of them are still in hiding. In fact, Massoon was telling us that just before coming to Canada, she had received a text from a friend who was a white helmet, another female volunteer white helmet, and who was pleading with her to get her out. And she said, I didn't answer the text because I don't know what to say to her. Where did Massoun end up after she got out of Syria? After she got out of Syria, the buses took them through Israel and into a UN camp in Jordan. And they got into the camp in Jordan, and that's where they had remained for four months. And they were under the supervision of the Jordanian government, but also under the supervision of the United Nations, where it was decided which countries they would go to. Eventually, White Helmets settled not only in Canada, but in Britain, France, Germany, and Sweden as well.

I'm really struck by this harrowing story. This woman, this journalist who has survived a war zone, she's earned international attention. She's managed to get out of the country, which is so difficult, and now finally come here. And you would be expecting a hero's welcome for the White Helmets that have come here. And I know that that's not what happened. what happened? No. No, it didn't. It was stark because having covered this from the beginning, I was expecting at least

some government representation even if it was at the official level. I wasn't expecting the full political circus, but standing outside of the arrival area, the international arrival area at Pearson Airport this week, there was myself and our camera crew and a representative of the White Helmets.

Maison! Maison! Ah! Why is it, do you think, that there was nobody to greet her at the airport? I think that there are a number of reasons for that. I think that, first of all, they are part of the international refugee system, and there is a lot of discretion that is required. discretion that is required, particularly those coming from countries like Syria are particularly concerned about any media attention and their images being shown back home.

They're concerned about retribution. And the concerns that they have is that they don't want their photographs or any video of them on the Internet or so that the Syrian government can see it and perhaps take retribution against their family. So I think there is a certain degree of discretion there that is necessary on the part of the government. that is necessary on the part of the government. But the government's reaction has been very, very muted. There was only a statement released late last week saying, yeah, they're coming.

We're not telling you how many of them are coming. And we're not telling you where they're going. But we're very happy they're here. And that was it. It was a very lonely welcome, a very quiet, lonely welcome to Canada. Migration is a very contentious political issue in Canada today. Do you think that might be another reason for the Liberals' muted reaction to the White Helmets' arrival? The government has been under a great deal of pressure right now because of the flow of illegal migrants coming up from the United States into Canada.

It has become a huge political issue. And I also think that there have been questions swirling around the House of Commons about the repatriation of Islamic State fighters. the repatriation of Islamic State fighters. I know that these are completely and totally separate issues from the outstanding humanitarian work that the White Helmets are doing. But the reflex of the government, I think, would be to just step back a little bit from anything to do with that part of the world and to try and just allow these people to come into Canada and to resettle quietly.

And to build a life. And to build a life. Murray, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. You're welcome. 117 White Helmets and their families will be resettled in four provinces, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario, and Nova Scotia. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to our very first episode of FrontBurner. See you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.

It's 2011 and the Arab Spring is raging. A lesbian activist in Syria starts a blog. She names it Gay Girl in Damascus. Am I crazy? Maybe. As her profile grows, so does the danger. The object of the email was, please read this while sitting down. It's like a genie came out of the bottle and you can't put it back. Gay girl gone. Available now.